The #keepbtlocal campaign has made it to the final round of bidding for our effort to divert the #privatization of our local telecom into #mutualization.
The major public critique from our opponents is that our cost of capital is too high (though our opponent is a heavily leveraged publicly traded company), so would welcome suggestions as to sources of friendly $$ to bite off pieces of the high interest loan that is currently most of our #coop's financing! #btv
One pager summary for a proposed one-shot #InvestmentClub to aggregate funds and make a loan to the #KeepBTLocal #coop through which we're attempting to divert a utility #privatization into #mutualization in #btv!
Welcome feedback, thoughts, and potential members: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rCUWQlLQI1Nsu71PRPCWeKtZ3RDxB2EsIjLrgKcSfnk/edit?usp=sharing
Proposed BT Investment Club Summary Context & Purpose Due to a legal settlement, the City of Burlington must privatize Burlington Telecom by the end of the year, and is currently considering four bids, including one from the Keep BT Local (KBTL) co-op, which aims to maintain local control by tran...
The community capital campaign to #mutualize our town's municipal ISP just launched. Only #Vermont residents can invest in the offering, but I figured the offering and campaign might be of wider interest...
https://www.milkmoneyvt.com/invest-public/all-campaigns-public/kbtl
#Coop #mutualization #coops #equitycrowdfunding #netneutrality #btv #vt #ISP
Great piece by @ntnsndr on #ISP community ownership and #NetNeutrality: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/26/people-owned-internet-exists-net-neutrality
Particularly relevant right now given that we're working to divert the #privatization of our local municipal telecom in #btv into #mutualization (sale to a #coop of subscribers)... #KeepBTLocal
I'm a #coop nerd based in #btv (Burlington #Vermont). My day job is with the #Vt #EmployeeOwnership Center, & other projects include #platformcoop, #buytwitter, a co-op #brewpub, a #CoopPrincipal model #InvestmentClub, the #LaboratoryB #hackerspace, and the #keepbtlocal #mutualization campaign of our municipal telecom.
#coops #mutualism #creditunion #creditunions #vtbiz #vtpoli #coopfinance #communitymedia #sortition #coopwatercooler #workercoop #ESOP #memberdrivenbeer
Matt Cropp 🌲🌲
Matt Cropp (now @ social.coop)